SPEAKERS

Matt Schneider, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:00:01]

Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show where I believe a healthy world is based on transparent conversations. In today’s episode of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, I sit down with my dear friend, Matt Schneider. Now, prior to Matt becoming a successful entrepreneur, he spent five years in special operations on SWAT and was a Task Force officer on the United States Marshals Office Fugitive Team. After his time in law enforcement, he founded his first company in 2013, and after scaling and selling the company in 2019, he was brought on board with a national brand as an executive director, which led to his serial entrepreneurship.

Matt Schneider is something extraordinary. In addition to being the founder and CEO of Memento Mori Capital, Matt is the Executive Vice-President and equity owner of a global software company, consultant and coach to dozens of 8- and 9-figure entrepreneurs, and founder of the Ubuntu Community for high-performing couples.

In today’s episode, we talk all about the dynamics of a relationship, the importance of limiting toxic relationships, and the capacity of what a healthy relationship will do for not only your health, but also your wealth, what a life of urgency is, and how to take action, and of course, the key pillars of a successful life. I really enjoyed this interview with the incredibly insightful Matt Schneider. I know that you will love this. Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and comment. If you have not already signed up for the newsletter, please head on over to my website at drgabriellelyon.com to sign up. Let’s dive into this episode.

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Matt Schneider, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. You are an absolutely unique individual. I’m really excited for people to get to know you. Before we jump right into all the things that we’re going to talk about today, I wanted to highlight some very interesting facts about you. Number one, former SWAT, two years on the on the task force for the US Marshals, which you’re going to tell me about that, and it was Violent Fugitive Apprehension. You are an epic 8-figure business entrepreneur, all around super fit guy, family man, married with a child and really bringing so much value to the world. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I know that there is a lot that you are going to be able to offer the listener.

Matt Schneider [0:05:37]

Thank you. What an honor to be a part of it. Dr. Gab. I couldn’t be more excited about the conversation.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:05:44]

Let’s talk a little bit about your history. It’s very unusual that an individual goes through all this training and then moves into an entrepreneurial venture. Tell me a little bit about your history and what you did, what you learned because it allows us to peek into life-or-death situations and  the urgency that you always talk about in life.

Matt Schneider [0:06:07]

As far as origin story goes, it almost feels like a different lifetime ago, but I do come from a law enforcement background. I got into that back in 2001. It’s interesting. Now we have a whole generation of people that don’t remember where they were when 911 happened because they were they weren’t born yet, and that just blows my mind. Nothing makes me feel older than when I’m talking to somebody and say, you remember 911? No, I wasn’t born yet. But for me, I was in the police academy when the planes hit the towers. It was a really interesting time to be getting into law enforcement because at the time where we’re seeing our country be attacked and all these first responders perishing, I was watching it from the training center.

Then fast forward, I graduated that program in 2002, continued on schooling with a degree in psychology, was hired on with the sheriff’s office in Boise, Idaho. I did a variety of things there. I started out in the jail. It’s not where I wanted to be because I’d never watched an episode of Cops where they spent more than a few seconds just putting somebody in the jail and going back to the streets and running and chasing bad guys. But that’s where the need was. I’m actually really glad, all things considered, that that’s where I started because as you can imagine, you can’t both be a crook and a cop, so my understanding of the criminal mindset was pretty low. But I learned very quickly in the jail a lot about the criminal mindset, a lot about the need to enter into conversations, and the need to be a salesman, the need to be influential. I learned from gangbangers, rapists, drug addicts, drug dealers, you name it, and just after a year, went to patrol and spent several years in patrol, but then I found that I really gravitated towards the more dynamic, critical incident. So I tried out for SWAT and made that. I spent five years as an entry operator on SWAT.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:08:16]

What is SWAT, for the listeners?

Matt Schneider [0:08:17]

Special Weapons and Tactics. When the police need help, they call SWAT. We say you’re the SWAT or you’re not, and you can always tell because if you paint a rock black, a SWAT operator will pick it up and put it in their pocket because they’re that tactical. But I had an amazing time doing that. I was involved in a lot of different critical incidents. We can talk about childhood and how I believe that my upbringing in uncertain dynamics and chaotic circumstances growing up actually made me a really effective special operations guy and my ability to keep a cool head under really stressful circumstances. That was actually noticed by others on the team and through the US Marshals. We had a task force that was attached to the US Marshals, and I was invited to try out and was selected for that team, spent a couple years hunting down and apprehending some of the most violent fugitives in our area for a couple of years. My last stint before I became what I consider to be an accidental entrepreneur was I was an undercover narcotics detective for a year and a half, and one of the most probably interesting things about me that people don’t know that’s fun is that I have actually made methamphetamine twice from scratch.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:09:47]

Nobody wants to go to your kitchen.

 Matt Schneider [0:09:50]

Well, it’s safe now. I’ve moved past that. But I went to DEA school, and that was part of the prerequisites of graduation. I had to, and the rest of us, cook methamphetamine from the ground up and had to test 95% pure or better. We had to do it twice to prove that it wasn’t just a fluke the first time. That’s something a lot of people can’t say they’ve done legally, but I can. That’s a funny story for maybe another day.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:10:17]

That’s incredible. I have just this overarching question. You joined the police academy, which I’m curious as to why, but you’ve spent so much of your career really not just on a superficial level, but on a very deep level, trying to chase and put away bad people. Where does that come from? Is that just about doing the right thing, being a sheepdog, making the world safer? Why put yourself in that position to such an extreme from US Marshal Task Force, narcotics, making meth, all of these things, being in jail, putting yourself in a way in which you are interfacing with some pretty bad people?

Matt Schneider [0:11:11]

I think it really comes from my upbringing of living in an environment with just a constant revolving door of men that my mom was dating, engaged to, married to, and just over and over and over again. I never had this steady father figure and steady safety and security component to my childhood and upbringing. There’s five of us siblings. My older brother is six years older than me, and he was out of the house most of my childhood. Therefore, I was the oldest of the kids that were in the house at that point. I just began to develop this real desire to be the person that would protect others who couldn’t protect themselves. I had a little sister; she passed away a few years ago, but she was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. She’s deprived of oxygen long enough to where she was mentally disabled her entire life and was completely reliant on those around her for all of her needs. So there was a really deeply rooted element of needing to protect and provide for others. That carried over into my first real job, which became in law enforcement.

I believed, and I have believed, for a very long time that everybody’s version of what they consider to be the American dream is different. I believe the American dream is still very vibrant and a part of this great nation. What that looks like and how people are going to find it, that’s up to each individual person. What they want to chase and pursue is up to them. But the fact remains that, if you want to go out and pursue it, you want to work hard enough for it, you want to dedicate the time and energy and focus into it, you can achieve it. But there are people out there who will stand in your way. There are people that will victimize, they will break into your home, they will rob you, they will sell drugs and poison our streets and kill our youth, and there are bad people out there. I wanted to be the person that would stand in between those that wanted to achieve the American dream and just create as much opportunity, as large of an impact as they can in this very short time that we have against all of those that would intervene or attempt to intervene and eliminate that threat, whatever that looked like.

I’ve really found it to be very rewarding and fulfilling to be that person that would take on that risk, so that others could sleep more peacefully at night and didn’t have to even be aware of a lot of the things that were happening in the community. That was very satisfying for me.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:14:02]

That’s so noble. I have these conversations a lot with individuals, and not necessarily on the podcast, but are things nature versus nurture? And yes, it sounds as if there was a nurture component. I use the word nurture loosely because it was somewhat, I’m guessing, traumatic, or at least, it made such an impression. But your nature was instead of going down a rabbit hole of bad behavior, which I don’t think anyone would have faulted you for, or maybe beating up on other kids, you chose a different way that was somewhat virtuous, but also very protective of other individuals.

Matt Schneider [0:14:51]

Yesterday, you and I were briefly talking about attachment theory, and it really had me reflecting on that because I do have a very secure type personality. While I think it could have been very easy for me to have gone down the fearful path or the self-doubting and preoccupied path, I did develop a very secure type of personality with, I think, a lot of elements of maybe dismissiveness because of the need to self-soothe and really go within. But I learned early on that I did not want to repeat the cycle in which I was being raised in. I knew that all of these starts and stops and repeats, the fact that it was really, I was unable to develop real friendships and real relationships with others because of how many times we would have to uproot and move every time my mom got remarried. She’s on her eighth marriage right now, and that doesn’t account for any of the other men that she dated. But I developed what I believe to be a very strong, secure personality because she was always there for us. While I’d never wanted to repeat the cycle and expose myself and family to the things that I was exposed to, she was there. I did feel secure in that way. We were top of mind for her, even though she wasn’t at our sporting events, or she didn’t know much of what was going on in our lives.

Unfortunately, my other siblings didn’t necessarily take that same path, and they did go more of this self-destructive route. But I very clearly saw what was happening and did not want to repeat that and made the commitment to not take the easy path. That’s where I really reasoned that she was doing and she was choosing easy over hard, and that was making a lot of things very hard on the tail end. She was choosing the easy path in the relationship by throwing in the towel when things got tough, but there was certainly a lot of hard things that followed it that led me to a place where I’m very proud that Chris and I have just celebrated our 17 years in marriage.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon  [0:17:18]

And Chris is your wife; that’s very exciting.

Matt Schneider [0:17:20]

Yeah. We have an incredible 14-year-old son; he’s amazing. But yeah, I just chose to break the cycle.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:17:32]

You did that. It’s interesting, I was looking at some statistics, and they said, according to the American Psychological Association, approximately 40% to 50% of marriages end in divorce. The next statistic was 60% cite infidelity as a major reason, so cheating on a spouse, not being able to really hang in there and being so excited by novelty rather than a shared mission, which, again, the people that I have on this podcast, as I had mentioned previously, really fall into two realms. Number one, a medical professional, PhD, an individual who has spent a lifetime deep in the trenches of academia. On the other side, there is a group of individuals that are truly exceptional, where the rubber meets the road, and everything that we talk about from a physical fitness standpoint, and everything that we talk about from a science standpoint, is actually quite frankly, completely irrelevant if you cannot embody the actions and the mental capacity to take the opportunity of life and move it forward. That’s why I wanted to have you on because, again, you have an exceptional background, and you are exceptionally fit, and you are all of these things that really make a great leader that is astounding that really can benefit the listener, my audience. For me personally, you’ve made such a big impact in my life.

You talked about secure attachment. When we think about attachment theory, it’s really the way in which people function and feel either safe and secure, or there’s insecure attachment. There’s a variety of reasons as to why that happens, but you do create relationships, whether it’s friendships or business relationships where people can actually always call upon you. I call upon you all the time for advice in business or life. It is quite profound that you have chosen that path because people who connect, just in general, the connection is a two-part psychological system. It’s a two-part psychological system, especially with your spouse, which we’ll get to as it relates to what you do in business, there’s really three pillars that you cover. You should actually explain them. But I don’t want to go too far into detail, because I do have questions as it relates to criminal mindset. But I do want you to say the overarching information that you provide, and then we’re going to go back, and we’re going to build up to those things.

Matt Schneider [0:20:52]

In regards to the three pillars, you’re saying?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:20:54]

Yeah, the three pillars of what you teach, what you believe, and then what we’re going to do, is we’re going to go back into your history, and we’re going to figure out where those came from and the personal experience as to what pushed those forward and how those have evolved.

Matt Schneider [0:21:06]

Totally, yeah. You mentioned the listeners and the different backgrounds of listeners, and one thing that, I would say, probably the majority of your listeners share in common, whether they’re very successful in business, whether they’re multiple degrees and working in medicine or science, is love and connection and this need to be in a community and a tribe of others that are like-minded and are cut from the same cloth. We need that. From a psychological, emotional standpoint, we need to be surrounded by others who help build us up and not break us down. Your listeners are probably husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, so we have these very important dynamics to who we are and what has helped get us to where we’re at. I learned a while ago, but not after experiencing some really hard lessons and challenges because of decisions I had made and the poor leadership skills that, I guess, I didn’t have, but nobody can accomplish anything significant alone. We cannot have really big, audacious goals and expect to achieve those goals by ourselves.

Your husband is a SEAL. SEALSs are amongst the top human beings on the planet in the point zero some odd percent that they are. It requires a team to really be able to accomplish really significant tasks. They’re very capable by themselves, but you have a team, I have a team. This element of relationships that you’re mentioning is critical. I believe firmly that our relationships are our riches. The three pillars that I operate from, and what we’ll potentially talk about how I’m implementing this into a couple’s community, but it’s health, wealth, and relationships. I have a very clear-eyed laser focus on those three elements and believe that if we have our health dialed in, our wealth dialed in, and our relationships dialed in, that makes for an incredible life with an incredible opportunity to impact, in the most positive ways, other people and live a very fulfilling and successful life and leave a massive footprint on this planet. That is something that at the end of our days when it comes, because it’s coming for all of us at some point, we can be very satisfied with what we accomplished.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:24:09]

You mean death is the thing that we all also have in common.

Matt Schneider [0:24:14]

A hundred percent and is inescapable for all of us, unfortunately.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:24:18]

It’s the one thing that is known. I don’t know, I go back and forth. Is it scary? Is that your time? All of those things, which I think many people have. The health, wealth, relationship pillars, I am curious as to what some of your background, what you learned to begin to develop and implement, again, there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there, but there are not a lot of former SWAT US Marshal, law enforcement, family men in just the way that you are, as it’s not common. It truly is that uncommonness that I think people are going to be able to really be excited about and learn from. Again, you started very early on having to deal with criminal minds and homicide and rapists, and people that are so different than you and so different than the individuals that you help now. You really help entrepreneurs, business owners, people that want to get the best version of themselves on all different scales. How was it like interfacing with the mindset of a criminal? Did you find that it’s very different than a mindset of an entrepreneur or a mindset of a, for lack of a better word, sheepdog? Or are they more similar than they are different?

Matt Schneider [0:26:02]

In some ways, there are a lot of similarities there. If you look at some major criminal organizations, whether it be the mafia or the drug cartels, they operate as a business. They are, interestingly enough,  entrepreneurs, just using their entrepreneurial skills and ability to create large organizations the complete wrong way. There would be times, whether it was in the interview and interrogation process, or the investigation process, that we would interact with individuals, and you would just think to yourself, man, if you would just put the things that you know and the things that you’re doing to work to help people instead of poison people or victimize people, you could create just as much, if not, more money and have positive impact on the world. Problem is, I could have all the empathy I wanted and I can—they say wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster. I could wish that they would use it for good, but they just wouldn’t. That’s where we come into play in eliminating them and holding them accountable for their actions.

But one thing that I think the overall profession did for me, and this is something that I get noticed for and people pick up on, is I live with an absolute sense of urgency. I was brand new in the academy. We were discussing crashes and car accidents and how to do things like develop drag factor and measure skid marks and angles of trajectory and things, and we were having a conversation about fatalities and how to investigate those. As we’re having this conversation, a call comes out over the radio where there’s been a fatal crash. Our instructor, or FTO, says, well, guys, it looks like there’s an opportunity for us to get some hands-on training since we’re having this discussion. We loaded up, went out to the scene, and when we get there, there’s a vehicle that had rolled multiple times. It had landed back on its wheels. It was in an obscure spot, and so it didn’t immediately look like there was a problem. But on one of the last rotations, the driver was ejected. About 20 yards away from the vehicle, there’s this dead body. I found myself, for the first time in my life, standing over somebody who I was thinking they had no idea today was their last day. They had no idea. That cycle and loop with that same message, they had no idea today was their last day, was played I couldn’t tell you how many times over a 10-year career in law enforcement. Sometimes it’s due to victimization, sometimes it was due to accident. Sometimes it’s due to negligence. Other times it was due to being a victim of a violent crime. But each time, I developed a more and more and deeper sense of urgency to live and to accomplish more knowing just how fragile life is.

That has absolutely carried into my personality. They say  people in law enforcement and military, they change over time. I think it’s impossible not to when you’re exposed to the realities of things like impermanence. It does change you. When you’re not seeing something on a movie screen that you know is just acting but you see it in real life, it has a way of changing your personality to a way where you see things differently, and you look through different lenses. You operate navigate the world differently. But I have chosen to help myself, my family, and those in my circles understand, without having to stand over dead bodies, how to live a life of urgency. That way, you can enjoy and have as many amazing experiences on this earth as you possibly can with the time that you have, which is unknown for all of us, and leave a significant impact. I believe that life can be very experiential, and it can be very colorful. It’s up to us to create as much of it as possible with time we have. I do that through just this sense of urgency.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:30:47]

Do you think that there’s a way to impart urgency on people that haven’t witnessed death?

Matt Schneider [0:30:55]

Yes. I have found it to be the case to where you help people see what their true potential is. A lot of people, they have this sense within them that they can accomplish more, that they are able to achieve more. But yet, they’re not. That’s very frustrating for a lot of people. When they feel like I am able to do more, accomplish more, have more, give more, donate more, achieve more, but yet, the reality is that they’re not. The reason why is different. Sometimes it could be because of a scarcity mindset with how they were raised. Some people have a relationship with money or people or opportunity because of what they were told and how they were raised in their home. Between zero and seven years old are very important years in a child’s life. If they grew up hearing that money doesn’t grow on trees, and they constantly experience environments where there’s more month than money, or the parents are disconnected. You mentioned some of the stats of divorce, which is really scary these days because it’s more expensive now to be in this world than I think it’s ever been. If you’re a single parent, and you’re one of those 50% of those relationships that ends in divorce, you’re a single mom or single dad, and you’ve got kids, how do you earn enough to get by, while still having enough time and energy and bandwidth to give your kids what they need to grow up in a psychologically and emotionally secure and safe way?

That’s one of the fears that I have, and one of the major reasons why we’re really making these big moves to do more for couples. But everybody is capable of achieving more and having greater impact. I just help them, whether it’s through coaching or just through relationships, figure out what are their self-limiting beliefs? What are the things that are holding them back? What relationships do they have that aren’t helpful, that are toxic, that are derailing them from their goals? Gab, I’ve found that in so many instances, there are people out there who have big dreams, but they’re surrounded by others who their dreams aren’t nearly as big, and rather than realizing that it’s not their dreams that are too big, it’s the people around them who are just dreaming too small and going in and entering into relationships and circles that are full of other people that are dreaming big and achieving big, they think small. They get small again, and they get sucked into these environments where they never accomplished what they’re capable of because they go back to thinking and dreaming small because they believe that they were dreaming too big when they weren’t.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:34:00]

That has the potential to manifest a lot of regret later on in life. You mentioned that one of the things that you see that there’s a whole host of reasons as to why someone is potentially holding themselves back or not reaching their full potential, and I think that we both argue and say that there’s always more to be able to do, there’s always more capacity. What would you say the top three things are that really hold people back? You said this the self-limiting beliefs and the toxic relationships, and I’m just thinking about some of the patients that I care for, and oftentimes, there’s this situation sometimes that happens where people work in bigger organizations and initially, it’s okay, so grow your capacity, be the best version of yourself. But potentially, within the bigger organization, it doesn’t necessarily help that individual fulfill their mission. Hopefully, this is making sense what I’m trying to say.

Again, you and I know each other so well, so I want to make sure, of course, that we’re bringing the listener on this journey is that, for example, if there is another opportunity that potentially presents itself and while relationships inherently, some are totally toxic, and some start non-toxic and really help individuals get to the next level, but maybe people outgrow relationships. Maybe potentially, does it come to a place where people don’t move forward because they’re afraid of outgrowing a relationship, or they’re afraid of severing a connection? I just wanted to add that into the self-limiting toxic relationships, and this circles back to what are potentially the top three things that really hold people back?

Matt Schneider [0:36:13]

That is such an important question and really, so relevant in people’s lives. Amongst those top three, I would say, that something that’s universal, no matter what somebody’s circumstance is that each one of us can take a look at our circumstances, and if we determine that we don’t like them, we want them to be different, we always possess the power and control to change them. What it’s going to take to do that is going to be very unique to the circumstance that you want to change. But we do not have to stay in whatever the environment is, whatever the circumstance is that we don’t like. We maintain and possess that power and control. Once people really grasp that, and they understand that they need to get into the driver’s seat of their own life, they need to pick up the pen and start authoring their own destiny, and they do that, that is the first step in starting down the path of creating change. As long as people continue to accept the things that they don’t like, or as long as people are accepting that, they will continue to get it. We will always get the things we accept. It a lot of times just becomes a matter of stop accepting the things that you no longer want, whatever that means.

It comes with discipline. Discipline is a bridge between what it is that you have, what it is that you’re experiencing, and what it is that you want. In so many cases, it’s not a matter of a knowledge thing. Knowledge is at our fingertips. At any moment, anybody can pick up a device and learn anything that they want. As AI is becoming more and more relevant, it’s just exponentially getting greater and greater what people can learn instantaneously. It’s not a knowledge problem, it’s an action problem. People that see and experience circumstances that they don’t like continue to accept it, therefore, they continue to get the thing that they don’t like. They’re frustrated by it, and then relationships start to deteriorate, and they get less and less convinced that they’re able to accomplish anything more and that this is just the way life is meant to be. It’s not. You just recognize that you have the power and control to change your circumstances. Life for all of us has peaks and valleys, and when we find ourselves in a valley, which we all will, we have to start the climb out. What that’s going to take and how much effort and how long is, again, just dependent on it.

To your to your point about relationships and the fear or the challenge when it comes to growth and severing relationships or the harm that can come from them, that’s a two-part answer for me. Part number one is, I believe very strongly in the need and how appropriate it is to be polarizing. What I mean by that is, if you look around in your circumstance, and there are people, there are habits, there are environments, there are elements of your life that are not serving you, your family, your goals well, those need to be pushed out. They need to be pushed away. There’s a saying out there that blood is thicker than water, and a lot of people think and misunderstand that to mean that if I have a relationship with somebody, even if it’s toxic and it’s a bad relationship, and I am worse after having be with this person than I am without them, but their family, so I’ve got to stick with them, that’s not what blood is thicker than water means. The actual saying is the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

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Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:40:03]

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Matt Schneider [0:42:49]

When I tell people and talk to people about being polarizing, even if their family, if they are bad for business, and they are harming you achieving your goals for yourself, your family, your future, they need to be pushed away. On the opposite end, just like a magnet, you start pulling in the people, the circumstances, the habits that start aiding you and guiding you and helping you achieve those goals and that health and the impact that you’re wanting. Now, when you’re in a married relationship, the problem that can arise, and I’ve seen this happen, is when one person goes on a journey of personal development and the other person does not.

You made the comment earlier that there’s really never a point where we arrive. There’s never that point where we find ourselves in a place where we’re like, this is the best version of ourselves. That just doesn’t exist. If we’re willing to continue doing the work our entire life, we will always have room for progress and to become a better and better version of ourselves. Bruce Lee once said that, be happy but never satisfied. Be happy with the work. Be happy with the progress, but don’t ever get satisfied because that can lead to taking your foot off the gas pedal and losing momentum and eventually becoming mediocre. So you’ve got to keep your foot on the gas pedal. But if you have one person that is going down this path of progression by way of personal professional development and the other is not, this gap begins to be created. As that gap widens, and one person is seeing new opportunities and experiencing new and exciting things in their life, and they’re looking at the others and they’re thinking man, they’re not doing their part, that’s where problems start to occur.

That’s where this wedge is present, and one person starts to feel like the other is an anchor and taking all the wind out of their sails. The other person is looking at their spouse and thinking, now they think they’re better than me. Now they think they’re more important than me. On both ends, their passive aggressiveness starts, and resentment starts to kick in. The gap widens to a point where you can’t reconcile because now you’re just two different people. You listed infidelity and some reasons for divorce, well, sometimes it’s a matter of we just become completely different people because one person went on a journey, and the other didn’t. Whose fault is that? Is it the person that didn’t pull along the other, along with them on the journey? Or is it the one that refused? But either way, the outcome is not good if one person goes and one person doesn’t.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:46:04]

Is that where you decided to add in that third pillar of relationships? You’ve been helping entrepreneurs for so long, and obviously, an entrepreneur yourself. You’d mentioned love, like potentially, there’s a component that’s about love, and I used to think that. I think love is what gets you in the door. There’s that excitement. But I think governing principles and a bigger mission and vision like a family ethos of going up against the world is hard, and other people are annoying. Stan Tatkin talks about how nothing is more difficult than another person, I would agree with that. As soon as people become deep family where there’s a deep commitment, whether it’s deep family or really close friendship, where it is a non-negotiable that you are now in it.

I think the division that you’re talking about is profound because initially, it takes a year to start seeing bad behavior in a new relationship. Statistics are it’ll be about a year before you start to see some of the bad behavior, and at that point, novelty begins to diminish. Love, potentially, is always there, and then creating governing principles to move the mission forward. It’s as if you are in the foxhole with an individual that we are going to battle with life.

When you are working with individuals or even in your own successful marriage, have you put together governing principles? For example, you don’t threaten the relationship, you know the vulnerabilities of an individual, you have the playbook on each other. What is a way that you create this secure attachment so that you can go and become this successful individual and this successful individual? Then again, I know you behind the scenes in a way that I know the individual that you are. You’re not an individual that is presenting one thing to the world and then it’s something else. This is one of the things I love about you.

Matt Schneider [0:48:39]

Yeah, thank you. Your spouse is the one person that you choose to do life with. We may choose the time to have kids. We don’t get to choose boy or girl, or hair color or eye color.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:49:01]

At least not now. Maybe next year.

Matt Schneider [0:49:02]

Well, yeah, right. In the future, yeah, we’ll see. It’ll be really scary. But our son was a month early when he was born because he decided to flip and go footling breeched. Our doctor said, he’s not going back. The foot is in the birth canal. My wife went in for an emergency C-section, and here we were, parents a month earlier than we had thought we were going to be. We didn’t get to choose that. Our kids will leave the house and leave the nest one day, and they’ll go in and create families of their own, and it will be you and your spouse right there.

Our spouse is the one person that we choose to do life with. What I have seen happen is there becomes this element of slipping into the temptation of just going through the motions. You mentioned that first year, I think it’s Dr. Tatkin says, don’t even think about getting married before the first year. You’re in the honeymoon stage, and you really don’t know people, and it takes a while for people to get into their best behaviors. But people slip into this, just going through the motions, and there’s so many different things that need to be done. Who’s picking up the kids? What do you got on your calendar and this calendar? Then, being married stops being exciting. It stops being fun, and it just becomes like a thing. The person that you’ve chosen to do life with ends up becoming somewhat of a business partner or a colleague. That’s where that connection starts to change in a way that there’s problems that are introduced.

My wife and I have non-negotiable core values. Those core values are the lens that we look through when it comes to how we approach life together, and how we are going to set our goals. Every year, we do an annual goal setting meeting where just her and I will leave for the weekend, and we determine what is it that we want to accomplish this year as a couple, individually, and as a family? That alignment is really important. Having clarity as to what you’re going to achieve together and how you’re going to achieve it is essential on top of the fact of recognizing what are her zones of genius? What are the things that she’s naturally gifted at that I’m not, and vice versa? How can we use and leverage those gifts and talents to aid and support and help accomplish our goals and to develop what’s commonly referred to in the military special operations as a force multiplier? How do you go from having just two people in the relationship to having 10? That is by understanding what your zones of genius are, what your goals are, what your deficiencies are, knowing what your spouse’s zones of genius, goals, deficiencies are, and how to leverage them to work together.

I think there’s a lot of couples out there who, if you were to ask them, what are your spouse’s goals? What are they really, truly passionate about? What do they want to accomplish? They couldn’t tell you. They couldn’t tell you specifically. If they tried and you were to ask the spouse, they would say they were incorrect. Imagine how much opportunity and what’s being left on the table if you don’t know your spouse’s goals and what it is they want to accomplish? How are you going to help them achieve what they want to accomplish if you don’t know what they want to accomplish? So it is much more about love. You can love somebody very deeply, and they could be that person for you, but is there more that can be accomplished by way of a force multiplication by doing life with the person that you chose do life with?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [0:53:34]

I think that there is so much potential in that, doing life with the person that you chose. When you’re talking, I can’t help but think of the third in the relationship. When I think about that, I think about you and Chris together as a couple, and then that third is, and I think for a lot of individuals, is the business, or it could be anything. It could be a child, a family member, it’s something that takes away from that two-part psychological system of husband and wife or partner, whoever. The married individuals, that’s one nervous system. You guys regulate, co-regulate, and then the third. I know for me, the third is going to be Shane starting residency. There is going to be a third person in that relationship that is going to take away probably more time away from any kind of dynamic that him and I will have. You deal with individuals that are really striving. How do we have a two-part psychological system that functions with core values and a third thing?

Matt Schneider [0:55:09]

I actually think that there’s definitely three with the potential of a fourth, if you’re not careful. There are always three relationships in every relationship. The first one is the relationship that you have with your yourself. You have to have a very strong, healthy relationship with yourself first if you’re going to be able to give to others in a very strong and helpful way. You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s the first relationship is the one that you have with yourself.

The second one is the relationship that your spouse has with themselves. They can’t give their fullest to you, and you’re not going to be able to optimize that relationship with them if they have an unhealthy relationship with themselves. There’s a lot of intimacy problems and challenges within relationships. That is a really important element to a marriage. If you have one person in the relationship where every time they look in the mirror, they just think such negative things and how could they be attracted to me and I’m so ugly, and so this and that, and just these negative loops play in their head, would that not show up in the bedroom? It absolutely does. When somebody thinks that they’re repulsive and why would they want to touch me or be with me, that plays a part in intimacy, which is a critical component, even though your partner probably doesn’t think that. They very likely don’t think what the other is thinking; it shows up. That’s the second relationship is the relationship that they have with themselves.

Then the third one is the one that they have with each other, the relationship that the two have. The fourth one that could be the potential that you’re speaking into, is if entrepreneurs, or even if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you’re just what someone considers to be a workaholic, is the business could be the mistress. Divorces happen a lot of times because of infidelity. Well, sometimes that infidelity isn’t another person. Sometimes the infidelity is the business. The one spouse sees the other leave every morning just full of energy, just ready to tackle the day, and it walks out the door with them. When they come home, whatever time that is, they left everything on the playing field, the team, the clients, the Board of Directors, the shareholders. Everybody else got everything that person had to give, and whatever’s left is what comes in the house. The wife and kids, husband and kids in your case, may think day in and day out, everybody else gets the very best of my spouse, and I always get the crumbs. That’s when our loved ones start to see the business as the other woman, as the mistress in the relationship. Even though the business is bringing in substantial revenue, and it’s providing amazing financial freedom and opportunities, if it’s coming at the cost of, we get the crumbs and you give everything you’ve got to everybody else, that ends up being very problematic in relationship.

One of the things that I work with my clients on and I speak about is the objective isn’t to find and strike balance. A lot of people are trying to find balance. They say, how do I get more work-life balance? If you really think about it, when we are balanced, we’re at a net zero. We’re not going up or down. While that might be okay for some, people like you and I and your listeners, Dr. Gab, we’re not okay with being at a net zero. We are only accepting progression. We want to be better today than we were yesterday, but we recognize we’re not as good today as we will be tomorrow if we’re willing to do the work. How do we continue to progress and get better, while also not letting important things slip through the cracks? It’s not by finding balance; it’s actually by mix. It’s really important for entrepreneurs, for people who are really serious about progression and achieving more to prioritize the things that are non-negotiable in their life and to edit and, in some cases, delete altogether the things that really don’t matter, the things that are fillers and just getting in the way of achievement and just land with what are the important things now, and you prioritize those in order. You give it everything that you’ve got when you’re doing that thing. You and I right now, we don’t have our phones on. We don’t have distractions. We are just 100% dedicated to this conversation, so that we can provide as much value to the people who would honor us with their time in listening to this conversation. We are giving it everything that we’ve got. When we end this, we are going to transition to the next thing, and whatever that is gets 100% of us.

Our families must be on that priority list. There must be a time where we transition to our family, and we are giving our family 100% of what we got. I am a very firm believer that if you are not doing a weekly date night where it’s just you and your spouse and you’re connecting, whether it’s just going to eat, or it’s going to run errands, but it’s intentionally you and them, you’re missing out on a critical piece of being 100% dedicated to that relationship. The same thing goes with the kids. So it’s just a mi. It’s a matter of transitioning from one to the other and being all in, and that’s one of Chris and I’s core values is to burn the boats, not be one foot in, one foot out and be all in victory death mindset and give it everything we have. That’s some of the guidance that I give in those areas.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:01:57]

When you are thinking about prioritization, what is it for you? Can you give some examples of the things that you prioritize and perhaps some of the things that you had to get rid of?

Matt Schneider [1:02:10]

Health is among the top. When you and I started working together, I was at a place where I was, I think, turning 40 and was very frustrated with the fact that my body was not responding the way that it used to. When I connected with you, Gab, I just verbally vomited on you to say like I do jiu-jitsu four times a week, I’m going to the gym, I’m cycling, I’m doing these things, and I’m so frustrated by it. That frustration was showing up in the relationship. It was showing up in how I was able to serve my clients. I knew that I had to get my physical health in order so that I can get my mental health in order and my emotional health in order. That is, I believe, something that should be absolutely top priority for everybody. We are all leaving a tremendous amount on the table if our physical health and our mental health is not in order. You cannot give to others your fullest if you don’t have that. For both my wife and I, that is top priority.

In addition to that, it is our marriage. Our marriage and living a life together with two people, I chose her, she chose me to do life with, there’s excitement and connection and new experiences. As we raise our son, we always have a series of priorities in the kind person that we want him to become, and a priority for me is that I am the man that I want my son to become and that I live in a way that as he’s growing up, and he’s seeing what does a man look like, how does a man treat a woman, how does a man approach the world, how does a man protect and provide, that they open doors, that they say please and thank you, that they do not shake a hand sitting down, that’s what my son sees in me. My wife is doing the same in a way of what does a woman look like, that she’s living in a way that resembles a kind of woman we want our son to marry one day, and that he sees her operating in the same way. The family is a top priority. We obviously have priorities in our financial freedoms.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:04:54]

Let me ask you before you get to financial. When you talk about your family being a priority, does that mean phones are away, this is a set time, you guys are always having dinner together? Are you discussing? For example, I was at my friend’s house, and he goes around, he’s got two sons. It was amazing. They will say a win for the day or the thing that they had learned or the failure for the day. Do you have specific strategies that create close secure bonding?

Matt Schneider [1:05:30]

We actually haven’t done this in a while. It was something that our son really liked to do when he was a little bit younger, but we do the high low buffalo. What’s your high of the day, low of the day, and then buffalo is whatever else you wanted to share. But he’s  grown past that as a 14-year-old, but we always eat dinner together. We serve dinner at the table, we sit at the table, we eat dinner all together. We do virtually everything together. We do jiu-jitsu together. we have been training jiu-jitsu for the last six, almost, seven years. We all do it. We get up in the morning, and we go. We go in the evening. We go to the gym together. When we are doing those things, we are all in together. For us, it’s about experiences. It’s about taking the time to do the thing. My wife and I for date night last night, we went to a concert. The concert was not nearly as good as the people watching, and that’s just the time that we got to connect.

For us, almost everything we do is in threes. We have three Super73 e-bikes, and we go on those bike rides together. We go on walks together. It’s just I would say, more than anything, we don’t try to put things in compartments. We are very intentional about doing things together constantly. Chris and I have created these circumstances where we get to work from home. Right now while our son is out of school is we have the ability to do things throughout the day together and to take those breaks and for him to be able to see us. That’s how we approach it is just the intentionality around experiences that we create the other.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:07:36]

How do you navigate conflict within the dynamic of the relationship? Chris is always right. You’re welcome, Chris.

Matt Schneider [1:07:50]

Yeah, exactly. She’ll love you for that. We actually did something. My Chief of Operations, Bridgette, she actually some months ago turned us on to something called an Enneagram. It’s a personality assessment; I have taken a variety. It was amazing. She said, hey, my husband and I, we did this. We did it so that we can learn how to work together, and we can learn how to leverage each other’s personalities together. I took the assessment. First thing, I was like, wow, this is scary how accurate. This really describes me.

My wife did the same thing. We did several sessions independently with the gal that we hired to review our assessment and then coach us on it. After several sessions individually, then we did several sessions together where this coach talked to us, and she said, Matt, these are the lights and shadows of your personality. Christen, these are the lights and shadows of yours. We walked through several different circumstances about conflict and the way in which Christen processes things and the way the internal loops that she plays in the same thing that I do, and how to navigate through it.

We have disagreements, just the way any relationship does, but we also have tools that we use to navigate that and hear each other and give each other space. What I need and what she needs, when we’re not seeing eye to eye on something, are very different. But me knowing what she needs and her knowing what I need has created and facilitated the environment for us to not let something fester and not let something become something it doesn’t need to be, and quite frankly, avoid conflicts altogether. If you’ve never taken an Enneagram, I highly recommend it.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:09:47]

I have taken it, and we typically have everybody on the team take it. I’m not going to tell you my number or my wing until you tell me yours because I have a feeling, I know what yours is. What is your main number?

Matt Schneider [1:10:03]

Eight.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:10:04]

Minus two, meaning mine is eight as well. What is your wing? Do you know your second number?

Matt Schneider [1:10:16]

I want to say it was a two or three.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:10:20]

Probably a two, I’m also a two. For those of you who are listening, eight is pretty much what you see here, relatively aggressive and get stuff done, all the things. There’s a light side and a dark side to it. They can be abrasive and single-focused, all the things. We are both eight, and then a two is a helper. Physicians are oftentimes twos. They’re really servants to humanity and those kinds of things. So anyway, if you have not taken an Enneagram, I highly recommend it. I will see if I can find a free link to one, and we’ll put it here in the show notes. I’m not surprised.

As I was thinking about this podcast, and I was thinking about what makes a good unit, how your background as it relates to law enforcement and seeing some of the things that you’ve done, and then pushing that needle forward to the entrepreneurial space, I was reading and what struck me is that the statement that the people that are really dangerous are those that are weak and afraid. Dangerous people are the people that are the weak ones. Those are the dangerous people to humanity, the dangerous people to businesses, the dangerous people to relationships, whereas the strong are not a threat.

The disciplined individual, the strong individual is not actually a threat to society. I just was curious as to your thoughts on that. That’s just a blanket statement, but I do think that it ties in beautifully as to when we think about these pillars for health, wealth, relationships, and just this life of urgency, if you’ve thought much about that.

Matt Schneider [1:12:22]

I completely agree with it. People who are weak and afraid, they’re the ones that I found that do the most amount of overcompensating. There was a time back when I opened up our first company in that 2013, 2014 timeframe where I was completely different from the person that I was presenting myself to be. I was taking that fake it till you make it approach. As a brand-new entrepreneur, my business acumen was very low. When people would ask me how things were going, I would tell them it was great. Things are great. Well, what they didn’t know is things were not great. They weren’t great business-wise, they weren’t great relationally, they weren’t great financially. We were starting to swirl the toilet bowl in all of the important aspects. Our health, wealth, and relationships were not good back then.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:13:21]

Was this your first job after law enforcement?

Matt Schneider [1:13:25]

Yeah, first company we started was a special operations training company. It was a credible company; I was just a shitty leader.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:13:33]

Which is surprising because law enforcement, US Marshals, that’s all team. The success of and livelihood and part time meth cook is dependent your survival as a team mate.

Matt Schneider [1:13:48]

I think working around civilians and being in a customer service standpoint was very different than what I thought it was going to look like. Leading people who don’t have to be there, who aren’t there professionally because they’ve passed all the tests and overcame all the things to be given the nod to join the team in a special operations environment can look very different when you’re in business. It wasn’t their fault. I had a great team, a great business model, but it didn’t translate as well as I thought it was going to translate. I was very weak and in a lot of ways, very vulnerable, but I wasn’t letting that vulnerability through because of ego and pride. The reason why I do believe it to be true that the ones that are weak are the ones that are most dangerous is because they are not being authentic a lot of times. Because of a protection of their ego and their pride and to avoid humiliation, avoid people seeing the reality, they will take a stance on something that is not in fact real, and they will fight tooth and nail to defend it. They will be like an animal that is cornered that will act out sometimes aggressively to defend the pride and ego so they don’t get exposed.

Some of the humblest people I know are they have the most incredible backgrounds, but you would never know it because they don’t have anything to prove to anybody. They just are who they are. Shane is a perfect example of that. You talk to the guy, you’re around the guy, and you’d know he’s massively intelligent. He’s a very smart guy, but you would never say that’s a Navy SEAL. You’d never know what he did unless he chose to tell you. But he doesn’t walk around telling people that he is. He doesn’t have to because he knows. He did what he did. He earned his trident. He earned all of the accolades along the way. He is earning his MD.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:16:18]

He’s done. He’s actually published 12 papers, first author papers.

Matt Schneider [1:16:24]

See? He’s so humble. I didn’t even know he’s already done it.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:16:26]

He is a physician. Not to interrupt you, but I do want to highlight what you’re saying. For those of you who are first-time listeners, shame on you. Just kidding. Totally kidding.

Matt Schneider [1:16:41]

That’s eight coming out.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:16:45]

My husband is a former Navy SEAL, was a Navy SEAL for 10 years. While he was deployed in Afghanistan and at war, he taught himself calculus and physics because he knew he wanted to go to medical school. In between operations, instead of playing a video game, sorry, guys, I know that you’re playing Xbox, he was studying and really working hard because he had a bigger vision in mind. That’s a little background on Shane. I got a tribute video for Shane when he graduated medical school. I knew all the things that had gone into it, and so I reached out to people he really respected. He has a friend and somewhat of a mentor who is a current Navy SEAL astronaut, who went to Harvard Medical School, was in [Jocko’s? 1:17:32] platoon. I reached out reached out to this gentleman, and I said, hey, I’m making the video for Shane. Here, I’m going to send you over this link. Can you say a few words? Incredibly accomplished, father of three, current astronaut, and his message, his video was always be humble and just really be a good person. He could have said, be the best and have a lot of bravado and said all these other things. But it was, Shane, you’ve got a lot of this figured out. You’re doing the right thing. Always do your best. Be humble. Just be a really good human and the rest falls into place

Matt Schneider [1:18:19]

How dangerous could a guy like that really be if he wanted to be? But that’s his advice. His advice is to be humble. That just says it right there. The ones that are confident and secure, they have nothing to prove to anybody. They’re not the ones to worry about. It’s the ones that are protecting their ego, protecting their pride, living unauthentically, those are the ones that are emotionally very fragile and the ones that can become the most lethal in a variety of different ways.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:19:01]

I’m going to butcher this saying, but it was those who know how to wield the sword but can keep it sheathed, those are the ones that are really dangerous because they are the most powerful. The other two pillars that you talk a lot about, we’ve talked about relationships. We’ve talked about health, which you’ve really done an amazing job with, and you are very disciplined. It’s interesting, you were joking and saying, you weren’t really living up to your potential physically. But you were doing something crazy. It was jiu-jitsu at this time and then training, and it was a whole host of things. Now moving to  that wealth piece because we were just talking about your first job out of law enforcement. What was it? Was it a security company, or were you providing weapons?

Matt Schneider [1:20:06]

It was a training company. Living in Idaho, we have the desert, the mountains, urban, rural, and we have the Mountain Home Air Force Base, and then Gowen Field, all nearby. We entertain a lot of tier one-type teams, which gave me the opportunity when I was in SWAT to be able to train with a lot of tier one teams. When they were on their training rotations, they would oftentimes come here because they could in one place get a lot of different training and whether it was high altitude stuff or desert stuff. I was exposed to some really cool training environment. This company was basically a replication of some of the things that I had the opportunity to train, but was strictly for government. This particular company, it was both open to law enforcement, military, and civilians, because Idaho was a very pro-Second Amendment, very pro self-defense state. A lot of people have chosen to carry firearms concealed or have them in their homes, but they there’s a real need for training so that they don’t make a mistake that ends up costing them their freedom or life. That’s what that company was, and it started out in 2013.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:21:22]

Were you able to turn it around?

Matt Schneider [1:21:25]

We were because of mentorship and coaching, because of really doing a lot of the things that I mentioned earlier, no longer accepting the things that I wanted to get, to taking off the mask, refusing to be unauthentic and have superficial conversations. At that time, it was hiring my first coach. At a time when I could not afford a coach and a mentor, the cost of not doing it at that time was going to be my marriage and financial bankruptcy. So I hired a coach and that was for the first time when I was introduced to real personal and professional development. I came from an environment where professional development by way of shooting and tactics and those kinds of things is very prevalent, but I was really very ignorant to what personal development was and how important it is in our lives. As soon as I got immersed into that world and started choosing to listen to podcasts versus Spotify, or unless I was listening to your podcasts on Spotify, chose to read books versus Netflix, that’s when everything started to open up. That’s where these pillars really started to get rooted in and we did round the corner, sold the company in 2019, and then started the variety of others since.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:23:04]

First of all, I don’t know if it’s a guy thing, because when I need help, like I have no idea what I’m doing, I do not wait long. It is immediate, execute, help me, I have no clue. Who knows if that’s just a personality thing or a do-it-yourself thing? When you sold the company, and now you’re doing a whole host of other ventures. I know that you have—do you want to just mention them? You don’t have to. If you wanted to, it’s amazing to see how diverse that a guy who came from law enforcement who is chasing down homicide people has really evolved their life through discipline and very conscientious living.

Matt Schneider [1:23:54]

Sometimes I look back and think it was just a different lifetime ago that I did those other things at this point. But I’m the Executive Vice President and a co-owner of a of a software company, a pretty substantial software company. That company in particular, we have a target valuation of $100 million. We’re getting to a point to where we’re really excited about the number and an opportunity to take an exit there. I do executive-level entrepreneurial coaching, and have for the last few years.

Part of my Enneagram, what I learned is that I love rooting for the underdog. I love working with people and helping them elevate themselves out. Part of my journey was I was a student of a coach and mentor. I established early on one of the best ways to achieve a lot in life is to have a CEO mindset with a white-belt mentality. You mentioned that you’re quick to pick up the phone and call me or others that you trust and ask for advice, that was a part of me that didn’t exist before. I think part of it was because of just how it made me look weak to ask questions or to call somebody and what they might think about that, when in reality, that was what I should have been doing all along. You’re a great example of how, if you want to get really successful, be a boss. Have a CEO mindset, but also have a white-belt mentality to where you’re willing to ask questions when those questions arise, and that you’re not expected to have all the answers.

One of the worst things you can do is take the fake it till you make it approach and make decisions and not ask for advice or guidance simply because I don’t want other people to perceive me to be weak, or I should know this, but I don’t know this because there are others out there who are willing to help and would love to help. I’ve been able to develop to a place to where I can now give back and be that coach and mentor to others. That’s been incredibly successful, and I just feel very fortunate to be able to work with some incredible entrepreneurs and helping them scale their companies. We are investors into a luxury home equity fund, and that’s the really exciting thing that we have going. Of course, we have this event coming up in July, which launches our couples community that I’m massively excited for that next step. Brand new, I’ve never gone down this path, which makes it exciting and scary and exciting all at the same time.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:26:37]

First of all, I so regret not being able to be at this event because one of my best friends is getting married. But you have to slot me in. I will be at the next one, so please.

Matt Schneider [1:26:52]

A hundred percent. We’re coming to you if you can’t come to us.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:26:56]

Oh, there. I love it. Lots of great shooting ranges here, but maybe not as good as where you are. Can you talk a little bit about the event? Again, I know you, work with you. Yes, I am your doctor. You are also a friend. You are someone who I go to and look to for advice. I’m so grateful to have your friendship and your mentorship truly. I would love for you to tell people where they can sign up for this event, find this event, all the things that you are doing, which I think are very profound and important.

Matt Schneider [1:27:35]

Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity. I think people would laugh when they saw that our text messages back and forth were like, you’re the best. No, you’re the best. No, you’re seriously the best. No, you are. It’s like when you’re young and no, you hang up. But, Gab, it is truly such an incredible privilege to be in your circle and to be a friend and a patient and to get to connect with you as much as I do. Before I talk specifically about the event, I do have to give some love where love is deserved. When I wanted to start this community, I was trying to figure out how do we scale? As a kid, I wanted to break the cycle of broken marriages and relationships and feel very proud about what we’ve been able to accomplish by way of being together 20 years married for 17, and how do we start dealing with combating these statistics of so many failed marriages and broken homes and kids being in bi-nuclear families, and so this idea about let’s do a community. But it didn’t necessarily start specifically as a couple’s community until my wife Christen proposed it.

But to take a step back there is we have a mutual friend, Lindsey Schwartz. I was listening to a podcast. Chris and I were driving up to our annual goal setting and forecasting weekend, and we were driving up knowing that a community is something that we wanted to start. Chris said, I heard this podcast recently with this gal named Lindsey and Lori Harder, and they were talking about community. Christen finds the podcast and we listened to it. That stimulated a conversation over the weekend. Lindsey has a five-part series on how to start a community that we listened to the entire drive home. By the time I got home, I shot her a DM and said hey, I’d love to connect with you more and pick your brain, which she was open to. So we connected on a call, and within the first few minutes of the call, I said, this is the ninja that I need to align with.

I’m so thankful for her because she doesn’t typically meet with people. She doesn’t coach people. She says there was just something about you and what you’re doing that I felt compelled to say yes. I’m so eternally grateful for that because what she allowed us to do is for me and Christen and then two others from the team to fly down to Arizona and meet with her for the day. It was during that meeting that we were talking through it, and she has such an abundance mindset that she just was this open book throughout the entire conversation. At some point, Christen proposed it being a couple’s community. Immediately, it just landed with all of us, including Lindsey. She said, I’ve been asked about doing a couple’s community for a very long time. It’s just not a path I’ve ever gone down, but I love it.

That then kicked this whole process into gear. With her guidance and mentorship, she proposed that we launch this community with a couples retreat. That’s what’s coming up in July. We have a two-day retreat where it’s primarily geared towards couples, the avatar, entrepreneurial-type couples or at least one of the other are an entrepreneur, but you don’t have to be. You don’t even have to be married to attend. We have several people that just want to learn and be surrounded by other healthy couples that are also attending. But we’re going river rafting, we have a private mixer at a great friend’s diamond shop. She’s got $5 million worth of these amazing pieces being flown in just for the event.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:31:47]

Gosh, I’m missing out.

Matt Schneider [1:31:49]

Yeah, it’s going to be incredible. The next day, we have a mastermind with some incredible speakers, Ray “Cash” Care, former Navy SEAL will be there. He’ll be putting us through a workout as well, a great mutual friend. Cynthia Thurlow will be speaking amongst others, and Lindsey is keynoting this event as well. Then we cap it off with a little private after-party at [Top Call? 1:32:16]. But the entire thing is meant to get couples to do something that they haven’t done for a very long time, which is to connect and go on an adventure together. When we’re first dating, we do a lot of fun things. We go on picnics, and we do things to impress each other, we’re on our best behavior. Then you get married, have kids, and all of a sudden, if you’re going on vacation, it’s a family vacation or maybe it’s to a resort in Mexico where you just sit and you plop down in a chair and you drink adult-flavored beverages all weekend.

But it’s not much of an adventure. This is meant to give couples an incredible adventure together and really connect, but doing it with other incredible couples that are all there because they want to really be immersed in an environment where nobody thinks small, everybody dreams big, everybody wants to accomplish more, and health, wealth, and relationships are among the top three things that they also want to progressively become more and more successful. We are just super excited. We’re four weeks out from it, and then that formally launches the couples community that will be both an in-person and virtual community for couples to learn, grow, connect, and achieve more together going forward.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:33:43]

Well, it’s going to be a great time. Sorry, I’m missing it, but I will definitely be there at the next one. Matt Schneider, thank you for spending time with me. I’m going to put all the places that people can find you. If you guys have any questions about Matt, feel free to DM me. Again, this guy is very amazing. I can’t wait to see you soon, my friend.

Matt Schneider [1:34:08]

Thank you, Gab. You are incredible. I love you.

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Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [1:34:12]

The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon podcast and YouTube are for general information purposes only and do not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. No patient-doctor relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast, YouTube, or materials linked from the podcast or YouTube is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professional for any such conditions. This is purely for entertainment and educational purposes only.